I enjoyed the remaster of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap and eventually got around to playing Monster Boy. This feels like a true modern sequel to that game. The amount of hours needed to beat this game is fairly long for a platformer (20+ hours in my playthrough) and surprisingly there was never really any boredom. It always tossed new challenges at you right up until the end of the game. it never stagnated.

There are some stumbling blocks here and there but nothing major although there is one point where you literally have to go to the settings and change something to progress through the game which I thought was dumb and broke the immersion. Also it was easy to accidentally drop off a ladder while climbing up if you accidentally leaned on the left or right arrows of the dpad. The beginning can be a bit hard, especially the first boss because you have so little health. Afterwards the difficulty curve becomes more reasonable but then jumps up sharply with your hero taking tons more damage than before when you get to the haunted mansion.

Generally though the rise in difficulty was mostly reasonable. A big part of that is due to the level designs that are well constructed and hidden secrets that are really creatively hidden. The different animal powers offer different capabilities and things really begin to open up when you get the frog form. This is also the first form that can wear and use equipment, some of which also add interesting platforming mechanics (like the ice sword, ice boots and fire boots). So much of it was so well thought out. There are some really good challenges that required not just dexterity but creative thinking and use of all your abilities and knowledge of enemy behaviors.

The bosses require a good combination of pattern recognition and figuring out what you needed to do first in order to damage them like a puzzle. There are multiple stages of a boss that force you to do something different from the previous stage to hurt the boss. However, there is at least one part of the final boss that I would never have guessed how to overcome without looking at a walkthrough.

The graphics and music are pretty good. I admit the art style doesn't really appeal to me but it suits the game. The music is what impressed me more and is quite catchy.

Overall this is a very worthwhile interconnected world 2D platformer. Not necessarily my favorite but definitely above average, especially for its challenge, which actually might make this a bit too difficult for newbies. I hope there is a sequel to this game.

Ugh this game. I’m back at it now that I’m done Mario Odyssey. It’s not a bad game and it has a lot of visual charm, but platforming in this game leaves a lot to be desired. The controls are too floaty while simultaneously feeling clunky. And platforms are ill defined. They are often shorter than they look. This means that you easily clip through the edge of the platform when landing. Or that it’s super easy to slide off the platform because you step too far and clip through the edge again. You can’t fully trust your eyes when platforming which becomes quite tedious in the more complex areas of the game. It looks like a game made today but plays like it’s from twenty years ago. That’s probably fine for long time fans of the series, but I like something where the game isn’t actively working against you. Compare this to the pixel perfect platforming of something like Hollow Knight and it’s easy to see why this game can be fun but is no masterpiece.

And the music is grating. There are a couple areas with decent enough tunes, but I’m not going to rush off and listen to the soundtrack anytime soon. It’s servicable background music at best.